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All
Saints, Ashwicken

Ashwicken,
the name, refers to two types of trees, the Ash
and the Wych Elm; but it was the horse chestnuts
that were most striking in the villages of this
part of Norfolk as we travelled through them. It
was early October, and a bumper crop of conkers
littered the ground beneath the trees. The leaves
had already turned, drying to tobacco-like husks,
and in some places this had been happening since
late July, an unwelcome early sign of winter on
its way.

The culprit was a plague of
leaf-miner, and all over England there were
chestnuts which looked as if they were dying.
Hopefully, they will bounce back next year, but
it was a distressing sight to see them in
otherwise bright green parks and woodlands so
early in the autumn.

Here at
Ashwicken, the mighty horse chestnuts at the church gates
seemed to have escaped the blight, and were as majestic
as ever. On the ground beneath them were thousands and
thousands of conkers. It was clear that very few children
had been here to fill their pockets. This is because All
Saints is one of those remote churches you find often in
Norfolk, some half a mile from the nearest proper road,
approached up farm tracks. A huge sign by the lane reads ALL
SAINTS CHURCH Our Church in the Fields WELCOME which
I thought was lovely. The graveyard belies this
remoteness - it is immaculately well-kept.

This part
of Norfolk is packed with tiny parishes, and inevitably
some of the churches have been lost to us. There are more
ruined churches in this part of England than any other,
and it is not because of the Black Death or lost
villages, but simply because the old pattern of manorial
patronage left us with more church buildings than
reformed Christianity could possibly cope with. All
Saints serves three historic parishes; as well as
Ashwicken there is Bawsey, where the former parish church
is an impressive ruin, and Leziate, where the church
building is now gone completely.

Reading
about Ashwicken church in Pevsner, you might not think it
worth the visit, but it is actually a delight. The
building is quite beautiful, the trunacated tower with
its 19th century cap looking lovely across the fields.
When you get close up, you see that the south wall is
made of carstone, but the grand Perpendicular windows are
surrounded by red brick, and supported by red brick
buttressing which Tom felt was Elizabethan. It was nice
to see the tumbling arrangement of the bricks at the top
of the buttressing. There are even mightier buttresses on
the west side of the tower.

You step
into what is, to all intents and purposes, a Victorian
church, but one which feels very simple and rustic. The
exception is an extraordinary wedding cake of a font,
dripping in pendant tracery and carved from a sparkly
marble. If it was a bit pinker you could get away with
putting a Barbie logo on it. Cautley, in a rare moment of
distraction, wondered if it might really be 14th century.
In fact, it was carved in Benares, in India, in the
1870s, specifically for this church, and given as a
memorial to a dead child.

The
chancel is rather sombre, with serious-faced windows of
St Peter and the Blessed Virgin, who looks
uncharacteristically matronly. The chancel is rather
dark; but, looking back westward, the nave was filled
with a beautiful autumn light, slanting gently
northwards, and dappled by the swaying chestnuts outside,
a memorable sight. We stepped out, and the threshing
giants towered above us venerably. I couldn't resist
picking up a few of their mahogany jewels as we left.